ECS Geforce GT 240 Review

Introduction:

AMD/ATI has been padding the market with its recently released midrange 5750 and 5770 cards for a while now. nVidia answered back with the low end GT 240, GT 220, and GT 210, and low end of midrange GTS 250 (for OEM, GTS 240 and 205) to even out the 200-series line. ECS has equipped its GT 240 NGT240-512QI-F with 512MB of GDDR5 and packed 96 CUDA cores on a 40nm-process GPU core with a 128-bit memory bus. The clocks are set at 550MHz GPU core, 1340MHz Shader, and 1700MHz memory. Other possible configurations are GDDR3 and 1GB memory size. The video outputs are DVI, VGA, and HDMI. Microsoft DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 3.2, and Shader Model 4.1 are the supported standards for gaming. The GT 200s are low power devices that don't even need auxiliary power, so while this card definitely won't be a hardcore gaming beast, it won't break the electric bill either. These look like good HTPC or PhysX cards, at least. 3D Vision works too and gaming capabilities should be similar to the 8800/9600 GSO's with 96 CUDA cores of prior generations so this card could be a capable affordable graphics card for entry/mainstream gamers or users looking to easily upgrade an OEM tower.

For any serious gaming, this card and the other GT 200s take a back seat since they are SLI incapable - they do work well as a PhysX accelerator, enough so that in testing of another GT 240 (the Palit GT 240 reviewed prior), aided by a vanilla nVidia GTX 260, that games using PhysX, such as Batman Arkham Asylum, performed far better and allowed PhysX settings to be cranked up.

Closer Look:

The front of the box has an RPG-style female archer shooting a fancy (probably magic) bow that has nothing to do with video cards, except rendering perhaps - a common trend with most companies. The only identifier for what video card is inside was a slip-on cover that was ripped during shipping. The slip says GT240 with 512 MB GDDR5 and 128-bit DVI/HDMI/CRT, which covers most of the pertinent information. The bottom of the front says some of the other technologies the card supports; note that it says OpenGL 3.1 rather than 3.2, which the card does support as per nVidia's website. Rotating to the back is a screenshot of Darkest of Days and some accelerated applications. The features listed on the front are in several languages on the back right. The slip lists the key features like Windows 7, DirectCompute, and OpenCL support. nVidia technologies like PhysX, Cuda, and PureVideo HD are also supported. Minimum requirements are a motherboard with an open PCI Express x16 slot, 300W or greater system power supply with a 12V amperage of 18A or more - based on a PC with a Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, and 150MB of hard drive space.

The sides and top/bottom are void of any pertinent information other than "Graphics Card," PCI Express 2.0, ECS Elitegroup, and Geforce. Some artwork keeps them from being boring however. The box is smooth and does its job of protecting the card but the only important information was on the slip that was damaged. Some minor information is listed on the front and back.

Opening the box is the standard corrugated cardboard box that protects the graphics card and accessories. Opening it up we find that the card is protected by both an antistatic bubble wrap bag and a PET film antistatic bag. The card is well protected!

The only accessories that come with the card, common for mid/low end cards, are a manual and driver disc. No adapters are really needed save for the few users who use standards outside of the ones that the card supports, like S-Video.